Monday, March 9, 2015

JEAN VENGUA

(This feature is part of TRUCK’s Theme Issue on the List or Catalog Poem. You can go HERE for an Index of the Participating Poets.)

When my mother attended grade school on an American
military base in the Philippines, she was ordered to speak and write only
English, and was punished if she spoke her native language. This poem
memorializes that bit of history by applying constraints upon English. The
poem--excepting the title-- must use only letters that are found in a Pilipino
(Tagalog) sentence: Sinunod ko nang walang-labis, walang-kulang ang
iyong utos (“I carried out your orders to the letter”). A more
exact translation might read: “I carried out your orders, no more, no less.”
Written in English, the poem must not contain: e, f, r, h, p, z, m, c, q, j, r,
v, z. Thus, it is constrained by a Philippine language, albeit using Western
letters. The lack of an e omits many
pronouns, and an important article, “the.” Of course, the idea that one can
write free-of-form is an illusion, an impossibility. If nothing else, the
medium applies the constraint, especially if you write poems online, as I have
often done; and then there’s the language itself.